By Patrice Wilson

“My first contact with dance was with my family and community,” recalled Tamara Williams, one of six recipients of the 2021 ASC Emerging Creators Fellowship. From as early as she could remember, Williams knew that she wanted to pursue dance as a career.

She grew up in Augusta, Ga., in a home with a disco ball that on late nights would become a beacon for community and connection. This is where Williams first began to study dance and where she said she learned that “dance is a celebration of community, of life, and joy.”

Williams earned her BFA in 2006 from Florida State University and, after graduation, toured with Millicent Johnnie and Dancers. After the tour, she danced in New York City with the Urban Bush Women, a company that centers black women perspectives and their role as core of community.

The experience, said Williams, “planted the understanding of what dance can do.”

“In many cultures, dance is used as a means for understanding life. Dance can reflect and celebrate harvesting, birthing, marriage, elders, youth and also death. It can also be used as a means of releasing, whether that release be of sorrow due to the loss of a loved one or to releasing tension in the body,” she said. “It is also a means of artistic expression – allowing narratives and history of cultures to be told.”

In 2011, Williams founded Moving Spirits Inc., a company that focuses on using African diaspora dance as a tool for black education and, as she said, “telling the narratives of black folxs that don’t have a narrative; that have been silenced.” In 2016, a year after receiving her MFA from Hollins University, Williams made Charlotte her new home when she became assistant professor of dance at UNC Charlotte.

The ASC Emerging Creators Fellowship is supporting Williams’ research of Ring Shout, an ancestral dance and tradition created by enslaved people in the Carolinas and Georgia. Through her fellowship activities, she has gained access to living elders, experts and artifacts that have helped her understand “what was happening in the body and what was released through it” during Ring Shout performances.

“Dances are tools of resistance,” she said, adding, “Ring Shout is a means of survival.”

In April 2022, Williams’ company will perform, “Ring Shout and Orishas, a Journey of Narrative” at UNC Charlotte.

Williams has been a Yoruba Practitioner for over 20 years, is an initiated priest of Ifa, Ṣàngó and Ẹgbẹ́ in the Ìṣẹ̀ṣe L’agba traditions from the Yoruba people and is also a practitioner of the Candomblé spiritual practice that come from the African-Brazilian people.

“In Yoruba culture, dance is a spirit. My experiences in culture and spiritual practices are not separate from my artistic practice. It motivates me to know that I practice the same cultures and traditions that came from my ancestors,” she said. “Being able to share these cultures through my artistic expression brings a great sense of pride and a greater understanding of who I am.”

A successful dancer, choreographer, educator and a beacon of community and connection, Williams gives this advice to budding dancers and creatives:

“Listen to your heart,” she said, “and follow the wisdom of the body.”